


Morning Conversations

by Ammar



Series: The Heart of Your Brother [2]
Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Forum: Goldenlake, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 20:10:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11066241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ammar/pseuds/Ammar
Summary: Zahir takes breakfast with the King. The King makes a request. Canon-compliant, and thus not quite part of the Strength of Lions 'verse.





	Morning Conversations

The morning sun had barely begun to suffuse the sky in shades of palest pink to deep vermillion. The Northern King, Zahir ibn Alhaz learned, kept ungodly early hours.  
  
Perhaps the King in the North could sense Zahir’s fear. He concealed it, of course, as best as he could, but it must have been evidence to the King-Who-Was-Voice, who knew the hearts of the Bazhir, even the son of a tribe that had refused the Moment in the long years since the mantle had passed from Ali Mukhtab.  
  
Could he have refused this meeting, as he refused the forbidden communion? Perhaps, Zahir acknowledged. But here, he was in the heart of the Northern King’s citadel; in the very seat of his power, and the fussy deportment master would’ve had a spontaneous heart attack had Zahir immediately declined the king’s invitation.  
  
And then the stoic training master would’ve probably dragged Zahir to this meeting by the scruff of his neck. No, Zahir thought; if he was to come, if he was to face whatever he was meant to face, he would do it on his own feet, with the dignity befitting a son of the Sleeping Lion, and a son of lost Barzun.  
  
“This day, my tent is honoured,” the Northern King said, and already, Zahir’s eyebrows threatened to climb into his dark hair as he murmured the response to the traditional guest-greeting. It was significant, he thought, that the king had chosen the words of a tribesman of the Bazhir, rather than the headsman’s greeting or indeed, the Voice’s greeting, that he was entitled to. “Well,” he added, with a smile that was more a flash of white teeth, “Not that this is really a passable tent at all.”  
  
Zahir merely inclined his head. He was not certain what one said to that, so he said nothing at all.  
  
The hovering squire on duty—Zahir recognised the face; a slight, nervous boy who’d become a page two years before Zahir had been sent to Corus as a surety against any sullen impulses the Sleeping Lion might’ve had—ushered him to take his place at a small, spartan table set for two to eat.  
  
“Normally, my wife dines with me,” the Northern King said, with another of those smiles. “As do my children. Today, she’s taking them to dine with the Carthaki delegation, which means some peace and quiet.” He winked at Zahir.  
  
Zahir just stared at him and remembered to take his seat only when invited to do so. Fortunate, that the deportment master had spent so long pounding the arcane vagaries of Northern customs into his skull.  
  
The Northern King said the traditional words of thankfulness before the meal, made the formal gesture of offering him water. He should have properly offered Zahir water before he was made welcome, Zahir knew, but he accepted numbly, his familiarity with the many different customs concerning truce and guest-right coming to the fore.  
  
By offering him water, the Northern King had made it clear that no harm would come to Zahir under his roof; not, at least, for the duration of this meeting. He was treating Zahir not quite as an honoured enemy, but nevertheless one to whom guest-right nonetheless had to be explicitly extended, and Zahir wondered what this meant.  
  
“Aren’t you going to eat?” The Northern King asked, and Zahir realised he’d been staring down at his plate, lost in his thoughts. “I assure you, one of the benefits of kingship is that you get better food than your pages and squires do. You must be hungry. I remember being that hungry, at your age.”  
  
He was. Zahir carefully took a piece of bread and tore into it. It was soft, fragrant; nothing like the baked flatbreads of the south, but it was something he’d become accustomed to, after these years at the palace. There was rich, golden butter and cheese to go with it; thin slices of meats and whole platters of fresh fruit and they did not speak to each other as they partook of the morning meal.  
  
It was, Zahir would conclude, a companionable silence. He was not sure what to make of it. The rays of light falling in from outside the windows crept across the carpeted floor as the morning wore on.  
  
Eventually, sipping at his glass of watermelon juice, the Northern King spoke. “I have a proposal I would like you to consider.” He nodded to that attending squire, and the boy acknowledged with a smart bow and faded out of the chamber, closing the door quietly behind him.  
  
Zahir tensed, slightly. “It would make good hearing,” he offered at last. If the Northern King would use the words of a tribesman, then he would receive such a response.  
  
The king leaned forward slightly, intent. He set his glass down on the dining cloth. It was a fine piece of work; Bazhir-woven—Zahir had noticed it, when he entered, but that movement called his attention to it once more, and with a jolt of surprise, he recognised the beading patterns on the tassels: patterns that proudly declared it had come from the looms of the Sleeping Lion.  
  
The home-longing took him, all of a sudden; an almost-physical cramping in gut and heart, in blood and bone. He swallowed hard and listened.  
  
“I would like you to become my squire,” the king was saying, and that was almost enough to make Zahir accidentally tip his own glass over. “Oh dear. Well, I certainly don’t think I’m all that terrible, though you’d have to ask Alanna when she gets in those moods of hers…”  
  
“I don’t understand,” Zahir ground out, wondering what the man had in mind. “It is customary for the prince to—”  
  
“—To squire his father, I know,” his comment elicited an approving nod. “I see you’ve been paying attention in your lessons. Rest assured I have other plans in mind for Roald.”  
  
“And for me?”  
  
The king glanced at him, eyebrows raised. “There are many merits to this proposal,” he said, lightly. “You would not do great deeds, that I can assure you of. A king cannot ride off into the sunset, having corrected great wrongs with his sword. Instead, you will learn to read the hearts of men, to judge and accept wise counsel…to balance caution with necessity, to make decisions that affect the lives of many.”  
  
“You would teach me to be a leader, then,” Zahir said, and he wondered where this sudden frankness was coming from. It was said, of old Barzun, that their sons were taught to draw the bow and to speak the truth, and the Bazhir did not brook lies among them, either. He did not dissemble, it was true, but it was…disconcerting, here, when the Northmen expected a certain modicum of tact, of deference to those of rank.  
  
Especially a king.  
  
“Why?” he continued. “Would you have a Voice of me?”  
  
The king was chuckling lightly. He shook his head. “Hardly,” the Northern King said, his voice dry but Zahir could still pick out the hidden amusement there. “There are many years left in me, Zahir ibn Alhaz. I am not decrepit and it is not the right time for me to groom the one who is to be Voice.”  
  
“Then?” Zahir challenged. “Why do you ask this of me?”  
  
“Because your tribe, and many others in the south yet close their minds and hearts to me,” came the reply. “Refusing the Moment is their right, and I understand their suspicion and resentment. ‘The Barzunni Voice’, they name me, and while none may make war on the Voice, neither will they accept me.” The Northern King shifted tack, all of a sudden. “Tell me, Zahir. What sort of future do you see for the Bazhir?”  
  
The words came, hot and fierce, even before Zahir could think if this was right, before he could ask himself if they were acceptable. “I would have us free, bending knee to no man, not even in the North. I would have us follow our traditions and cleave to the Balance, as our fathers father’s and their own fathers have done, in the great chain stretching all the way back to the first to find the sands.”  
  
He closed his mouth abruptly and met the deep blue eyes of the king with stubborn defiance. He would not take the words back. He wondered if they slew men for speaking so openly, in the North, with their talk of treason.  
  
“How will you achieve this future?” the Northern King challenged.  
  
Zahir hesitated.  
  
“I would have us fight for it, if we must,” he said, at last. “And if we died to the last man—”  
  
“Then what then?” the King-Who-Was-Voice pressed. “Shall the Bazhir become no more than the dust on the sands? Shall they become as a dream, or the memory of a dream?”  
  
“Then what would you have of me?” Zahir demanded, and he realised he was shouting, having sprung to his feet, watermelon juice soaking the tablecloth with the faint pink of blood spreading in water. “What would you have of us, Voice of the Tribes?”  
  
“I would have you listen,” the Northern King said. “Sit down.”  
  
Numbly, Zahir obeyed. The king sighed, and passed a hand before his eyes. “Mithros preserve me,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t have gone at you like this. Listen, Zahir. The Bazhir are dying—” and Zahir almost sprang to his feet again, ready to shout hot denials, but the king talked over him, all the same. “The tribes are dwindling, and if Ali Mukhtab had not done what he did, there would have been generations of war and no more than a slow death, until the last Bazhir passes from the world, with no one to mourn, no one to sing his memory. Tortall cannot afford a semi-hostile force in her southern lands.”  
  
“Lands claimed by a king who sought conquest,” Zahir protested.  
  
“Yes,” the king said. “I know.”  
  
Silence.  
  
Eventually, the Northern King spoke again. “It is a slow death, either way,” he murmured. “I understand your anger. It is a most imperfect world we live in, and this peace, this slow assimilation of the Bazhir into the North—this loss of so much richness; this change is as hard as death itself, and perhaps even another death. But this, too, I believe: that it is the only way for the Bazhir to survive.”  
  
“Will we still be the Bazhir?” Zahir challenged. “In this new order you dream of, will we even be Bazhir, should we bend our knee to the yoke?”  
  
The king raised his eyebrows. “What yoke?” he wanted to know. “Zahir, I do not expect the Bazhir to be anything more than partners, in a very new kingdom Thayet and myself are trying to build. Change is painful, yes. It is frightening—deeply so. I understand that. I know how it feels. What will become of the Bazhir? I do not know. This is something the Bazhir will have to determine for themselves, even as they are swept up in the winds of change. But Ali Mukhtab made the greatest possible sacrifice, handing the mantle of Voice to one he considered the son of the Bazhir’s most dangerous foe. It is as water spilled on sand now. What will you make of his sacrifice, Zahir ibn Alhaz?”  
  
“And being your squire,” Zahir said, determined to not show any sign of wavering. “How does this feature into the grand scheme of things?”  
  
“Just this,” the Northern King said. “You are the son of Alhaz ibn Shahir, and of the tribe of the Sleeping Lion, and for both reasons, you are deeply suspicious of me. As I have said, I understand that. I understand how you feel. I do not ask for your loyalty or for your heart, but that you give me a chance to show you the future I am working towards. And perhaps, if you honour me with your acceptance, we will discover, together, what the Bazhir will become.”  
  
Zahir was silent for a long time.  
  
“Know this,” the Northern King added, and for the first time, Zahir realised they’d been conversing in the tongue of the tribes; he hadn’t even realised—the slip into his childhood tongue had been as natural as falling asleep in a bath of warm water. “I do intend to tutor you in leadership. If the Bazhir are to be equals, then they must have the voices of equals. To do that, I must have Bazhir in my councils, in my armies, in my courts.”  
  
Some of the Northern pages, Zahir reflected, would not have understood. “Isn’t he your Voice?” some of them would have asked. “Aren’t you bound to obey him?”  
  
None may make war on the Voice of the Tribes. But the Bazhir bend knee to no man and the Voice cannot command obedience from the tribesmen of the Bazhir.  
  
Would his father have approved?  
  
He did not know. But this far from the Sleeping Lion, deep in the Northlands, Zahir had no one but himself and his conscience to consult, and he did not know how Alhaz ibn Shahir, the man they named the Southern Fox for the wisdom of his counsel, might have responded to this man: to the King-Who-Was-Voice.  
  
Finally, he shrugged. “I do find myself curious,” Zahir admitted. “Very well. I accept.”  
  
The king broke out into a relieved smile. “Excellent,” the Northern King said, with a cheshire grin. “Gary bet me three nobles you’d say no. I’m looking forward to relieving him of that money.”  
  
“Gary?” Zahir managed. Better than to ask the Northern King exactly what sort of bets he’d gone about making, and if he did that all the time.  
  
“Oh, you know,” said the king, airily. “Sir Gareth the Younger—nobody particularly important, my prime minister—you’ll meet him once I introduce you to council meetings tomorrow.”  
  
“Yessir,” Zahir muttered, wondering just what he’d managed to get himself into.

**Author's Note:**

> Refers slightly to some of the things I'm working on in the Zahir longfic but is otherwise a departure from that AU. (AU-ception much?) I'm ambivalent on the theories that Jon wanted to groom the next Voice--but I do think he planned to put Zahir in some form of prominent position, whether as some form of Bazhir ambassador, or just even the governor/steward of Persopolis (since that position is supposed to be traditionally held by the Voice, but Jon's kind of overtasked as king.)


End file.
